Egyptian Elections: 62 Percent Turnout

Nov. 28: Women place their votes in a ballot box at a polling station in a girls school in Cairo.

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Results from the first round of voting in Egypt's parliamentary elections are being announced this hour. Already, according to al-Jazeera and other news outlets, there's word from the head of Egypt's Elections High commission that 62 percent of eligible voters cast ballots.

The Associated Press adds that Abdel-Mooaez Ibrahim called the number "the highest since the time of pharaohs."

Al-Jazeera says that many of the individual races will be going to runoffs because no one candidate got a majority of votes.

We'll update with more as the results are announced. It's expected that Islamist religious parties collected the majority of votes and that the "long-banned Muslim Brotherhood" will play "a major role in the country's first freely elected parliament," The Associated Press reports.

Jadaliyya.com has a "Concise Idiot's Guide to the Egyptian Elections" posted here.